Conspiracy of Beers
by Mercator
Summary: The brewers of A-M are lining up for battle. And everyone knows Vetinari doesn't drink (when anyone's looking). SEQUEL to and spoilers for Say Yes (R-section). This baby is finished!
1. Default Chapter

*** Word of explanation: If you get down the first few hundred words of this and are still wondering why the heck the Patrician has anything to do with a seamstress, you can check out "Say Yes" in the R section for all the conniving, twisted and very Vetinarish details. It's definitely better to read "Say Yes" first, if possible, unless you don't mind reading the spoilers here.

(Disclaimer: Discworld characters and setting belong to Pterry. Non-Discworld stuff belongs to me, except for the name Ansbach, which is a town in Roundworld Bavaria. It sounded like a good beer-brewing suburb of Ankh-Morpork to me). BTW, thanks to my beta readers; you know who you are. J ***

In a star-speckled vacuum lit by suns, a turtle of planetary proportions swims its patient way towards the end of the universe. This is Great A'Tuin the Star Turtle.  

            On the shell of Great A'Tuin balance four elephants, and upon these sits a world flat as a cushion that's been whoopied, a world of oceans, lands and some surprises that we don't need to go into at the moment.

            Somewhere on the pockmarked landscape of this world, a city rises up like a plague boil in need of a lance and a dollop of ointment. This is Ankh-Morpork, largest, oldest and rankest of metropolitan areas.

            Hubwards and a bit widdershins of the city is a public square. This would not be unusual save for the fact that out of the many public squares in Ankh-Morpork and its suburbs, this is the only one that is clean. The cobbles are scrubbed. The benches are free of graffiti. Garbage is deposited in  receptacles designated for the purpose. The doorsteps of the houses surrounding the square are swept by elderly people in therapeutic shoes who do such things of a morning. 

The square is called the Platz.

            In the center of the Platz is a stone column twenty feet high. Hanging on a spike a third way up is a small wooden sign, in need of a paint job and a spell check in two languages, which states: _Wilkomm too Ansbach_.

            More prominently displayed on the column is another, much larger sign. Its iron is polished to a high sheen, its edges are welded with decorative brass flourishes and its glowing letters are infused with more than one kind of magic. It states:       

            _Ansbach Purity Law of 1303 (Year of the Distressed Wombat): __We hereby proclaim and decree, upon our own Authority, that henceforth in the Exiled Kingdom of Ansbach (Uberwald), in the Country surrounding as well as in the City and its Marketplaces, the following Rule applies to the Brewing of Beer: No Ingredients aside from Barley, Hops and Water may be used. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this Ordinance, shall be punished by the Council of Elders in accordance with Tradition, to whit, Confiscation without fail of such Barrels, withdrawal of Beer Brewing Privileges or, at the Pleasure of the Populace, Decapitation._

**

            "I'm afraid that it's quite impossible."

            "Just a tiny subsidy is all they're asking, your lordship. Something to get them through the summer."

            "It is not my policy, Hanna. If an industry fails, it is no doubt due to lack of efficiency. It is natural for inefficient industries to fail."

            The supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, the Patrician Lord Havelock Vetinari, was sitting in his palace garden in a severe, straight-backed chair reading the papers on his lap. It was a warm, late spring afternoon. Wisteria bloomed. Butterflies fluttered among the trees. It was not yet hot enough for the distressing smell of the river Ankh to invade the greenery.

            There was a second chair in the garden, a curved one with a velvet cushion, occupied by Hanna Louria Stein. The chair was far enough away from the Patrician that Hanna had to raise her voice to speak to him. Between them was a field of stacked paper weighed against the breeze by pieces of rock. Clerks periodically removed stacks and formed new ones.

            There was no official title for Hanna. The staff referred to her as Milady though she was not of noble rank. She attended social occasions with the Patrician and hosted dinners at the Palace though she was not, by a long shot, his wife. She had a permanent suite of rooms not far from his though she did not, technically, live at the Palace. 

Until four months ago, Hanna had been one of Ankh-Morpork's most prominent seamstresses, an entrepreneurial profession with low start-up capital, seeing as no uniform – or any clothing whatsoever – was needed. The Patrician had coerced her into a "contractual business  arrangement" for reasons having more to do with destroying her circle of important clients than with her skills in the bedroom. That still hadn't stopped him from replacing his twin bed with a queen within days of their agreement.

The scandal Hanna caused was exquisite among Ankh-Morpork's nobles, who nevertheless grudgingly admitted at her Palace dinners that at least the Patrician was now taking his social duties seriously. The common people had reacted a bit differently, with a general sense of relief. They'd been wondering about the Patrician, less about his sexual tastes than his species. It was generally thought that the kind of asceticism he'd practised before Hanna's arrival couldn't possibly have been human.

"I'm asking this as a personal favour," Hanna called across the lawn.

            "The answer is still no."

            "It's my family." 

            The Patrician looked up briefly from his paperwork. "I can not show favouritism. Of course you are free to spend as much of your own salary as you choose, but no city funds will be granted to Ansbach brewers." He returned to his work.

            The word favouritism did it. As she made her exit, Hanna considered stomping on a few of the Patrician's precious stacks of organized paper. But just as a heeled shoe hovered over what looked like the latest City Watch budget, she decided not to aggravate him. He was not a man who appreciated shows of willfulness. He had views on spite and ingenious ways of dealing with it in other people. 

            Instead, she stalked out of the garden without saying goodbye. It was only a small way to show her displeasure, but with the Patrician, there weren't many choices. When he was working, the man ticked along like a metronome, allowing nothing and no one to distract him from his duty. The Duty, he called it, capitalizing the word with his voice. She hated him when he was working, when the Duty made him so focused on the minutiae of the city that there was no reasoning with him about anything else. 

As she strode out of the palace and ordered her driver to ready the carriage, she admitted to herself that perhaps hate was too strong a word. She didn't hate the Patrician. She didn't like him much either. Most of the time he was a mildly unpleasant fact of life, like grey hairs. Since her contract began she'd noticed a few more of those in the mirror.

            The carriage travelled to the hubwards-widdershins section of Ankh-Morpork. When it crossed the Platz, it passed an invisible border: from Ankh-Morpork proper to the suburban,  incorporated town of Ansbach. It had been there when Ankh and Morpork were separate towns, had for two thousand years proudly flown its flag, a yellow crown on a green field, symbolizing its ancient control over Uberwald, the Ansbachers' ancestral home. Several centuries ago Morpork had grown enough to engulf the town, but the Ansbachers were a stubborn people and refused to part with those little cultural tidbits like language, funny clothing and music that was only listened to because it was "traditional." This last point wasn't altogether true; the Ansbachers were known to be good at two things: Music and beer brewing. 

            The crown on the Ansbacher flag was something of a red herring. A keg would have been better. The real king of Ansbach had always been beer.

            The red brick facades of the Brewery District stretched from Schwips Lane to Heiter Street. By last count, twenty-four breweries operated within stone's throw of one another, all of them family run and all, proudly, still brewing according to the Purity Law of the Year of the Distressed Wombat. Centuries of alcoholic steam belching from the chimneys had given all of Ansbach the thick smell of grains cooked to intoxicating perfection.

            When Hanna stepped out of her carriage onto Schwips, she tossed back her head and took a deep, luxuriant whiff. She was a fifteenth generation Ansbacher on her father's side and had grown up in the area. She had a nose for the local smell. 

Her forehead wrinkled. 

            "Excuse me," she said to the first person she encountered, a barrel-chested man wearing a white coat and a look of panic on his face. "Is there a problem with one of the breweries? The smell…"

            The man -- Hanna recognized him as Brewmaster Georg Tauch -- was almost pushed off the curb by another white-coated man in the process of running, arms flailing, down the street. He wasn't the only one. A stampede of men in white parted like a herd of steer around Hanna and Tauch and closed ranks again in their dash to get off the streets. 

Tauch stared at Hanna and tried to speak despite an accent thickened by panic.

            "It almost vorked, Miss Stein!" He grasped her arms. "I ssought vee could do it! I ssought, ja! At last vee make local beer like vee should. Goot beer! Pure beer!" Tears rolled down Tauch's fat cheeks. "They laughed at me. They laughed and ssaid, 'Georg, he vants to make beer from city malt. Can't be done,' they ssaid. Import the barley from Ubervald or Borogravia. City malt is no good. It is unstable. But I tried. I am but a dreamer!" 

            Hanna heard a rising whirr, and a growing thumping noise that originated from a brick building across the street. Tauch's brewery. All of the doors and windows were open. A thin man in a white coat raced out and halted before Tauch.

            "Meister!" the man said.

Tauch shook his fists at the sky and cried, "Vhy? Vhy?"

"Meister! I could not hold it! Vee must take cover!"

            Tauch returned to himself, looked at the thin man, then grabbed Hanna's arm. "Vee must take cover!" he repeated, and dragged her up the street.

            "You used _local barley_?" Hanna cried, allowing herself to be dragged. The problem with this was not lost on her. The Ansbacher technique for beer brewing had been perfected a millennium before in the Old Country. Hanna's ancestors brought the technique to the valley of the Ankh, but never stopped importing barley and hops from back home; it was widely believed that grains grown in the swampy lowlands outside of Ankh-Morpork were inferior and would corrupt the beer brewing process. 

Brewers outside Ansbach normally dispensed with grains of any kind. Used coffee grounds, tea bags, old socks and other recyclable material was routinely milled by Ankh-Morpork brewers and cooked up into a beer of such quality that no Ansbacher would water the privy with it. There was one advantage, though: It was cheap.

            The thumping grew until it pounded like an enthusiastic base drummer with no sense of beat. Tauch pulled Hanna to a crouch behind a horseless vegetable cart.

            "Vee vait here," he said, gasping for air. "Ja, you must see how I am ruined. Ruined!" The tears began again. 

            "Nobody has ever used local barley," said Hanna. "It never works, everyone _knows_ that."

            Tauch shook his head like a condemned man. "My beautiful vats! My brewery! Ruined…"

            Hanna peered round the cart. The street had been cleared as if it was the middle of the night. The metallic throbbing sound seemed to be reaching some sort of climax. She gripped the spokes of the wheel and ducked.

**

            The Patrician raised his head and stared up into the distance. The large initial sound had possessed a distinctive quality that could only be called an explosion of architectural proportions. The noise that followed could have been the collapse of a large set of gongs under a well wielded sledgehammer. Hollow sounds, twisting, whining metallic sounds, followed by what sounded like a shower of virulent, oversized hail, came next. The Alchemists Guild – the usual source of explosions in the city -- was currently located turnwise of the Palace. These explosions had come from…yes…hubwards and a bit widdershins. 

Lord Vetinari rang the little silver bell at the foot of his chair. A servant appeared at his elbow. 

            "Did Miss Stein intend to go to Ansbach this afternoon?"

            "Yes, milord. She left more than half an hour ago." 

            "Please be sure the Watch goes to help clean up."

            "Yes, milord."

            The Patrician returned to his paperwork but had a momentary lack of focus. He wondered if the explosion had been a brewery. It could have been the Guild of Tinkers, clever men based in Ansbach who keenly welded or soldered bits of metal that probably should be left well enough alone. But the Patrician was a practical man; he didn't believe in coincidences. 

            With a sigh, he went back to his reading, the minutes of a meeting of the Ansbach Council of Elders. Locally elected, the Elders ran the neighbourhood on a superficial level. The Patrician allowed it because it had always been so; Ansbach had elected Elders for 1,500 years and he was not a man to buck tradition without cause. 

Of course, he also kept an eye on  the main Ansbach secessionist groups. That report was waiting for him next to his left foot.           

**

            Even after the last twisted bit of metal clanged to the street, Hanna thought it best to stay in cover. It was quiet. The only sound was the hissing of steam from the hulk of the former brewery across the street and the sobbing of Georg Tauch. Hanna patted his shoulder.

            "Stick to imported barley," she said.

            He blew his nose on his sleeve. 

            Others began venturing out of their hiding places. Men in white coats gathered amid the wreckage of the brewery. They turned the bricks over with their shoes and touched the larger shards of metal lying around as if they were holy relics. They spoke softly, respectfully. It was the death of a brewery, after all.

            When it looked safe enough, Hanna sprinted up to the corner of Schwips and Serendipity Street to a brick building identical to Tauch's except that it was still in one piece. The doors opened before she knocked.

            "Hanna! It vas Tauch, vasn't it?" 

            Several pairs of hands dragged her into the building, the doors slamming behind her. 

            The entire staff of the Stein family brewery stood wide eyed and silent on the shop floor, their hats in their hands. A stone mill loomed to one side, sacks of six-row barley lying in piles in the corner. Nearby was the copper cereal cooker, which resembled a massive tea kettle with tubes, gauges and a hopper that hung overhead. Double doors in the distance led to other rooms where beer was boiled, fermented and cooled. 

             "You saw it, did you? The explosion?" asked Lotte. She was Hanna's sister, ten years older, double so heavy, a mother nine times over and owner-director of Stein's Brewery, where the well-respected Steinbräu had been brewed for five hundred years. 

            "Terrible," said Hanna. "Brewmaster Tauch is beside himself."

            The staff of the brewery was made up of fifty men and women, a rank of dwarves for the bottling machine, a few trolls for the heavy lifting and a gnome responsible for cleaning the inside of the vats. Many of the human employees were family. 

An aproned man with spectacles stepped forward. "Ve are doomed," announced Brewmaster Fritz, Hanna's uncle. 

Hanna put a hand over her eyes. "What _else_ has happened?"

"Morporkians thought Steinbräu vas too expensive already, and now look." Brewmaster Fritz waved at a small stack of barrels in a corner. "Vithout our input, the price on Ubervaldean milled barley has gone up again. Demand for our beer is down, production cut. Now this. At least Tauch had an _in-sewer-ants_ policy…" Brewmaster Fritz removed his spectacles and rubbed them with a fat, red thumb. 

            "Fritz here vanted to try city barley too. To cut costs," said Lotte. "Thank the gods I convinced him othervise."

            "But ve must do something, Madam Director," said Brewmaster Fritz. He lowered his voice and leaned towards the women. "If things don't improve in a month, ve'll have to let go of all non-family staff."

            The past several months, Hanna had paid the salaries of many of the employees out of her own pocket in hopes that her sister would get things back in order. Her savings were gone and now she had nothing outside of what the Patrician paid her under her contract. A generous amount, but not enough to support the brewery.

            "The Patrician von't help," she said. She always slipped into the local accent when she was at home. 

            "Then vhat good is your…relationship…if he von't _do_ anything!" said Lotte. 

            "His people vere already buying beer for the palace from Ansbach brewers before he met me. There's nothing else he's villing to do. He has a hands-off economic policy."

            "Villainous!" 

            "If he supported us, he vould have to support all the other breweries," snapped Hanna. "He's fair that vay." 

She glowered at her sister until she realized that she was being defensive about the Patrician, of all people. Hanna called him a villain all the time. When she was alone. And never out loud. Lotte, though, had no right. 

"He von't directly subsidize the Ansbach brewers and he von't talk to the guild," said Hanna. "He might help _indirectly_ if ve thought of something else, some other vay to get people to buy more…"

            Her voice trailed off as she looked around the shop floor, at the worried faces of the workers, some her cousins, a few of the youngest her nephews. She spoke to her cousin Gerhard. 

            "How much beer do you drink a day?"

            "Had a bottle already," he said, sliding his eyes to Lotte. "Plan another after vork."

            "Only two? Two the whole day?"

            Gerhard shrugged.

            Hanna asked Putty Slipstone, a dwarf. "About three on weekdays, Miss Stein," he said. "More on my day off, but…" He looked embarrassed. "…they don't sell Ansbach beer at dwarf bars. Too expensive."

            "Torsten?"

            "Maybe two."

            "Sylvia?"

            "I can barely get through one."

            Hanna stared around at the staff. She knew brewers didn't consume as much beer in their leisure time as other people. It was the same principle as what she knew as a seamstress:  "commerce," the euphemism of choice in her guild, was not nearly as enjoyable when it was your job. But the brewers at Stein's Brewery drank a lot less than she'd imagined.

            And then she examined herself. She liked a good, cold, yeast-rich beer in warm weather, but rarely drank more than two at one sitting. In winter she chose red wine over lager. 

            "I think ve need to drink more beer," she said finally. The staff stared at her. "Maybe ve all do, everyvone in Ansbach. Maybe everyvone in the whole…city." 

            "Vhat are you talking about?" snapped Lotte. She disliked it when her sister acquired the sly little smile that signalled some kind of plan.

            "Mister Brech is still head of the Ansbach group in the guild, isn't he?" asked Hanna.

            "Vhat are you planning?"

            "Not planning. Thinking." 

Lotte put her fists on her hips. 

"All right," said Hanna. "I am planning. But I have to think a bit more. Just… just make sure ve have a good supply in the varehouse. I think ve'll be needing it soon." She headed toward the doors. "And spread the vord."


	2. II

             The Patrician was trying to shave. Noblemen normally had people to do that for them, but Lord Vetinari had views about men with sharp knives at his throat. He had a goatee with jaw-line extensions, which required a steady hand and rather elegant turns of the razor. He had, most likely, the steadiest hands in Ankh-Morpork. 

            There were problems this morning with shaving because of Hanna. She had stepped in front of the mirror. She was wearing a silk dressing gown and was smiling with encouragement. The Patrician didn't want to know what she was going to encourage him to do.

            "Yes, Hanna?" he sighed. 

            "I wanted a quick word with you."

            The Patrician raised the razor blade. "Surely it can wait five minutes."

            "I'll take only two. Promise." Her smile widened. "I just wanted to ask you a small favour. The Ansbach division of the Brewers Guild is planning a bit of a festival for Grune15. I wondered if they could use the Plaza of Broken Moons that day for the activities."

            "I will have to talk to the Merchants Guild." He tried to wave her from the mirror.

            "I've already asked them. They said they won't give up their market stalls unless you tell them they have to."

            "I never tell anyone what they have to do."

            After Hanna stopped laughing, she said, "No, really, that's what they said."

            The Patrician was mildly irritated that after only four months under contract, Hanna was already ignoring his raised eyebrows. They'd always been a potent weapon, the eyebrows. Just last year he uncovered a plot by some of his enemies to shave them off. 

He set his razor aside. It was warm in his bedroom; shaving soap began to slip in minute increments down his cheek.

            "What kind of festival would the brewers like to have?"

            "A beer festival."

"My word. And here I was assuming it would have something to do with cheese. _Why_ would they like the festival on the Plaza of Broken Moons instead of in Ansbach?" 

            "Because it's the social center of Ankh-Morpork." 

Hanna helped herself to the white fluffy towel around the Patrician's shoulders and wrapped it like a muff around her hands. "The drinkers of Ansbach beer are too specialized," she said. "It can't just be noblemen and the few other people in this city who actually have good taste. There are plans to expand the market. Increase consumption. That sort of thing." 

She dropped the towel. The Patrician's eyes followed it to the floor. The soap on his cheek had negotiated the sharp drop of his jaw and joined its fellows slowly trickling down his throat.

            "Plans," he said.

            "Yes."

            "The festival is one part of these plans."

            "Yes."

            "The most important part?" Hanna gave him a neutral shrug. He nodded. "I see. And if I say I will _advise_ the Merchants to move their stalls on Grune 15, you will let me shave."

            "That was my plan, yes."

            Their eyes met and held for several seconds. Shaving soap slid down the Patrician's neck like cold, thin pudding. 

            "I will have a note sent over directly," he said.

            "I'll tell the servants to fetch a warm towel." Hanna went on tiptoe and kissed him carefully. 

            After she left, he positioned the mirror, refreshed the soap, and tried again. At first, it was hard going. It's harder to shave when you're smiling.

**         

            "Ve have to sell it at a loss, Lotte, or give it avay," said Hanna later.

            "How are ve going to make payroll by giving beer avay?" Lotte paused to kick the thermometer attached to the starting tank at Stein's Brewery, where Thorsten was slowly adding small amounts of yeast to the liquid inside. Hanna trailed behind her, a sheaf of papers in her hand. 

            "I've calculated it. Ve start a new brand called Ansbach Beer, ve get all the local brewers to contribute from their stocks and ve'll divide the proceeds."

            "Ve've alvays competed, Hanna, you know that," said Lotte. "The brewers vill never agree to vork together."

            "They vill. Trust me. Then ve'll sell at a loss, but charge slightly more than the cheap beers. I'll make up the difference myself."

            Lotte regarded her sister. "You said you vere running out of money."

            "I'll find it. Ve have to invest in the campaign for avhile, and then you can charge vhat you vant."

            Her sister rubbed the stubble on her cheek. "There's no guarantee that this… _add-vord-icing_…vill vork. And I'll be out of a varehouse of stock."

            "Don't vorry, Lotte. You should be at full production vithin a couple of veeks. Promise." 

**

            She hit the bars first. Ankh-Morpork had no lack of drinking establishments, most of them rather impromptu hole-in-the-wall operations involving a slab of wood balanced on a few cinder blocks, a couple of barrels and some rude stand-up tables. Hanna aimed a bit higher, at bars where the customers could sit down. 

            Obsidian the troll, who loaded carts at the brewery, and the dwarf Putty Slipstone carried the samples strapped to their backs and Hanna did the talking. It was tough. Everyone agreed that Ansbach beer was worlds better than the Ankh water usually served. Most of the barkeepers had no objection to allowing free sauce to be passed around but when they heard the price for a full order, they politely escorted Hanna and company out of their establishments. After the third bar in one night, Hanna called for a strategy break.

            "We're doing this wrong," she said. 

            "Maybe we should try dwarf bars," said Putty.

            "They'll be more likely to buy from us at these prices?"

            Putty shrugged. Dwarves were known to be exceedingly thrifty folk. And that was putting it nicely. 

            "This is the cheapest we can get it," said Hanna in frustration. "I can't afford to lower the price anymore." She started walking quickly, head bent, Obsidian striding behind and Putty trotting to keep up. She was thinking so hard she didn't notice a piece of graffiti  scrawled on the wall of a closed shop next to Harga's House of Ribs. _Up with Ansbach!_ it said. 

"We have to be smarter about this," Hanna muttered as they turned onto Gleam Street. "Targeted. We need…" She stopped suddenly. Putty walked into Obsidian's legs. Hanna pointed. "What's that?"

            "Watch bar," said Obsidian.

            "The Watch…" Hanna slowly smiled. It was the kind of smile her sister hated. She waved for Obsidian and Putty to follow her.

            The Bucket was the watering hole of choice for off-duty members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. It was not too clean, not too loud, not too classy. Much like a cop. When Hanna, Obsidian and Putty stepped inside, about thirty heads, some helmeted, some human, turned to stare. All conversation stopped.

            Very carefully and not so as to make it too obvious, many of the watchmen straightened up in their seats and took quick glimpses at themselves in the reflection off their beer glasses. A few spat in their palms and attempted to smooth back their hair. 

It wasn't that they knew who Hanna was. They didn't. It wasn't that she was particularly pretty or well dressed. She wasn't.

            What did get the watchmen wishing they'd put an extra hour's shine on their armour was that same quality that had made Hanna popular with some of the leading men in the city in her pre-patrician days. Call it open, natural sensuality. She wore it as easily and unselfconsciously as a pair of gloves. It was refreshing in a city where respectable women kept their unmentionables so bundled up that most men could only give a rough guess where they were. Or _what_ they were.

            She smiled at the watchmen and gave a communal wave. "Hello, there," she began. "I'm Hanna, and I'm representing the beer brewers of the Ansbach neighbourhood."

            There was an embarrassed cough. Another watchman dabbed a wet beer mat at his throat in hopes that this would improve the smell.

            "My associates here and I would like to offer all of you a free sample of the new Ansbach Beer," said Hanna. "It's made from grains imported from Uberwald and Borogravia and brewed according to the ancient techniques that my ancestors brought to the…" She realized that the watchmen were staring at her with the type of look that said they were not really listening, only wondering when she'd return to the point. The part about the sample beer. To a watchman, free beer was even more enticing than unmentionables.

A massive watchman at the back with an open, clean-shaven face, raised his hand.

            "Yes?" said Hanna. 

            "I heard Ansbach beers were made from real mountain spring water," said Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. 

            "Well…they _used_ to be…" Hanna looked around. The other watchmen seemed to have stirred at the mention of water other than what needed to be hammered, boiled and strained after it came out of the Ankh. "But now, Ansbach beer is made from waters from…" Hanna took a breath, "…the slopes of Cori Celesti itself."

            There was silence as the watchmen considered the quality of water from a mountain inhabited by the gods. Pretty high, they guessed. The watchmen at the table with Captain Carrot bent their heads together, whispering. Hanna waved for Obsidian and Putty to start unloading the beer. 

            "How does it get here?" asked another watchman. Watchwoman, actually. She had long, blond hair and a look of controlled violence. Corporal Angua sat close to Captain Carrot.

            "How does what get here?" said Hanna.

            "The water. You said it comes from Cori Celesti. Do the gods just snap their fingers and fill a water tower up in Ansbach?"

            Hanna cleared her throat to buy a moment of thinking time. "We… don't have a contract with the gods." She smiled. "Yet. You see, we've hired the Ice Giants to chip large slabs of ice from untouched glaciers. The ice is then secured in special wagons and by the time it reaches the city, it's melted into cool, pure water." 

            Corporal Angua stared at Hanna. 

            "What about  aquifers?"

            "What about them?"

            "You don't get the water out of aquifers?"

            In fact, the brewers did get the water out of aquifers, but Hanna wasn't about to be caught out in a lie.

            "The snows of Cori Celesti," she said.

            "I thought you said glacier ice."

            "That too."

            Hanna realised she had to work on her sales pitch. In her usual line of work, soliciting had involved a lot less talking.

            Obsidian and Putty were busy pouring out beers and setting them on the tables. The watchmen looked at the glasses suspiciously. Of all people, they knew you don't get something for nothing. They were waiting for the hook.

            "Drink up, then," said Hanna. 

            "We don' have t' pay, do we?" asked another watchman from Carrot's table, a scrawny man with a skin problem. 

            "It's our gift. From the brewers of Ansbach."

            Reluctantly, the watchmen drank. The only sounds were of slurping, gulps and the scrape of glass on the tables. 

            "Have you ever tasted a better beer?" said Hanna.

            The watchmen relaxed a little. It really was good beer. They started talking amongst themselves. The group at Carrot's table had their heads together again and were whispering heatedly. Finally, Carrot raised his hand again.

            "You don't have to raise your hand, captain," said Hanna.

            "Your name, ma'am," he said. "Is it Hanna Stein?"

            All conversation in the bar cut off again. Hanna took a deep breath. She hadn't wanted this to happen.

            "Yes. Yes, it is," she said.

            The buzzing in the bar was louder than before and Hanna caught words like "seamstress" and "the palace" and even one or two "Patricians." There were a few back-handed snickers, but not many. 

She waved for Obsidian and Putty to hand out another round of beers. The watchmen drank them down without hesitation. The entire bar was suddenly in an expansive mood.

            "Best beer I ever had!"

            "Refreshing, cold, no newts…"

            "Bet the Patrician doesn't drink as good as this." The watchman who said this was smacked hard by several of his fellows.

            Hanna thought it best to take advantage of the situation. "How would you like Ansbach to be the beer of choice for the Bucket? The exclusive beer."

            "Too expensive," said Mr. Cheese, the owner. When she looked at him, he cleared his throat and added, "Ma'am."

            "Not tonight. Let's discuss."

            An hour later, the watchmen were cheering the news. Ansbach would become the only beer served at the Bucket. They pounded their approval with fists on the tables because Ansbach was the best beer in the city. Their enthusiasm had nothing whatsoever to do with Hanna's relationship to the man at the Palace who paid their salaries.

**

First thing in the morning, Hanna was at Pseudopolis Yard, headquarters of the City Watch.

            Commander Vimes was at his desk, staring at a stack of paper as if the sheer force of his glare would get it read, processed and filed. He didn't look up after Hanna stepped into his office.

            "Sorry to disturb you, Commander," she said.

            Sir Samuel Vimes had what one could politely call a weathered face. It usually contained a scowl. At the sight of Hanna, the scowl metamorphosed into a mixture of surprise and embarrassment. He straightened in his chair.

            "Good morning, Miss Stein."

            "It's _a_ morning." Her eyes were rimmed with shadow. "How's married life treating you?"

            "Just fine. How's…palace life treating you?"

            Hanna smiled as she took a seat by his desk. "Palace life is also fine. Life with the Patrician, on the other hand, is probably the same for me as it is for you. Normally irritating. Thank goodness I can cope with just about anyone."

            "Glad to hear it."

            They grinned at each other briefly, then Vimes shifted his gaze to various parts of his office -- the file cabinet, the pile of armour on the chair beneath the window, the crossbow leaning against the wall – as if they were exceedingly interesting. 

Though Vimes was not one of Hanna's ex-clients, he _thought_ he was. He had a fuzzy recollection of meeting her for drinks a few times when she was younger, before her skills called her to the attention of more nobby sorts. The memories were vague but Vimes knew there were only two possible ways their times together had ended: With him passed out in a despondent heap in his Bearhugger's whiskey or…the other way.

He was now married and off the drink but he was still a man with pride enough to hope that once, just once, he hadn't been _that_ drunk. 

Then again, there were some experiences he did not want in common with the Patrician. 

            "So," he said. "What can I do for you on this fine morning?"

            "I have something rather delicate to ask."

            "Wouldn't have anything to do with that graffiti around, would it?"

            "Graffiti?"

            "Political stuff. Ansbach arise, freedom, but spelled…" Vimes looked at the top sheet of the stack of paper he'd been staring at when Hanna came in, "…f-r-i-e-d-e-m."

            "That's not even good Uberwaldean," said Hanna, who could speak a dialect that had died out 500 years ago in Uberwald itself. 

            "It was carved on the gates of the palace last night." Vimes waved the paper. "The Patrician sent a memo."  

"I didn't see it. Last night I was at the Bucket. A nice bar." She started absently folding a piece of paper she'd taken from her handbag. "The Watch seems to be comfortable there."

            Vimes watched her hands work the paper, creasing it here and there.

            "I passed around some samples of Ansbach beer and the watchmen loved it," she said. "They have good taste, you know." She smiled, but Vimes kept his face neutral. "Yes. And in future, the Bucket will be selling only Ansbach."

            "Bit expensive, isn't it?"

            "There's a special."

            Vimes was thinking about his dumb luck. He was born in poverty and was now married to the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork but it was just his luck that when he could actually afford to try a bottle of Ansbacher beer, he couldn't. It all started with one drink…

            "The deal with the Bucket is at a significant discount, a loss for the breweries," Hanna was saying as she put the final folds on the paper in her hand. "But we'd really like the Watch as a customer. It would be a wonderful _exchange_ if the brewers could _add-word-ice_ that Ansbach is the beer of choice for the Ankh-Morpork City Watch." She stopped. 

Vimes' face had frozen up.  

            "_Add-word-ice_," he said.

            "Yes."

            "That the Watch is full of drinkers."

            "Not at all. That the Watch is full of men and women and…miscellaneous with excellent taste. Ansbach is not for drinking."

            "It's not? Better for a good shower, is it? Watering the flowers?"

            "It's for enjoying. A gourmet's beer."

            "We're more the Klatchian curry, burnt crunchy bits, distressed pudding types."

            "Would it hurt to change the image a little?"

            His chair tipped back, Vimes stared at her for a while, an unlit cigar bobbing in his mouth as he champed it. 

"Does the Patrician know about all this?"

            "Not yet. I don't think he'll be very happy about it."

            Vimes felt a smile coming on. He'd known the Patrician for many years and liked him less as time went on. Vetinari had granted Vimes a knighthood, and like most of the Patrician's gifts, it was one the recipient didn't want. 

"What do we get in exchange for this _add-word-icing_?" asked Vimes.

            "The brewers will confirm a one-year discounted contract with the Bucket and they'll provide all watch houses with tea and dart board replacements during the same period."

            "We drink a lot of tea. And we need about ten new dart boards a year. It's the Librarian. He--"

            "We'll take care of it." Hanna unfolded her origami butterfly and passed the paper to Vimes. "What do you think?"

            It was a rather good drawing of a watchman holding a bottle. In bold lettering beneath was: "Ansbach Beer: Official Beer of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch."

             "The Patrician won't like this, eh?" said Vimes.

            "The Watch is a city institution. He feels the city shouldn't play favorites in business."

            The watchman looked happy with his bottle. Vimes remembered the feeling. He handed the paper back and knew that a scolding from his wife was going to be the least of his problems. But it was somehow irresistible. 

"Make it obvious he's off duty, and you got yourself a deal."


	3. III

The deal with the Watch launched the campaign. Hanna paid owners of buildings at busy intersections for the right to have _add-word-icing_ painted ten feet high on the walls. Within a week, the off-duty (i.e. helmet-less and sandal-less) watchman with an Ansbach in his hand could be seen across the city. The Patrician went out in his carriage to examine the billboards, then went for a quiet chat with Vimes. Within another few days, the ads had been painted over.

            That hardly mattered now because the word was already out. Other bars were beginning to demand the same deal the Bucket had. And Hanna was on the next part of her plan. She enlisted the more entrepreneurial of merchants to set up stands in the public squares where samples of various beers could be tasted for free. Customers who chose Ansbach as the best tasting of the unlabeled samples received a free beer. It was called the "Ansbach Challenge." Morporkians blocked the streets as they lined up for a try. The word _free_ had that effect on them.

            Next, she stopped by for a chat with an old friend who did the beverage purchasing at Unseen University, the Disc's college of magic. This was a full time job because wizards were full time eaters and, by extension, drinkers. Basically, they weren't picky about what they drank as long as it stayed within the university budget and went down well with whatever meal happened to be on the table. After a few happy reminiscences about her visits when he was a student, Hanna's friend put in for a large order of Ansbach. Then he went to have a lie down.

            It was also natural for the Guild of Seamstresses to pitch in and help their prominent sister. Mrs. Palm, president of the guild, didn't hesitate to approve a flyer Hanna presented that advertised both the beer and the services of the guild. The drawing was simple, just a bold design of the Ansbach crown pierced by a needle. Above, it stated: "A seamstress and an Ansbach." Below: "Feel like a king." Seamstresses passed out copies on the streets or flirted with shop owners until they let them tack them in the windows.

            The Patrician was finishing his evening meal at the palace while reading a book entitled _A Short History of the Ansbach Diaspora: Year 500 to the Present_ which he had propped up on a lectern beside his plate. He didn't look up when his clerk Drumknott entered.

            "I thought you might want to see the Ansbach flyers, sir," said Drumknott.

            The Patrician turned a page and took one last bite of chicken. Not long ago he'd considered dry toast an adequate dinner but an off-hand comment from Hanna about his thinness had given him the occasional urge to eat meals of more substance. 

            "I saw them this morning," he said.

"The new versions, sir?"

            Drumknott set the flyers in front of him. The Patrician glanced down. The first was exactly the same as what he'd seen earlier in the day. The crown and the needle. The words: "A seamstress and an Ansbach. Feel like a Patric--" 

Lord Vetinari coughed so long that Drumknott had to whack him on the back. When the chicken finally made it down, the Patrician gulped a glass of water. He pulled himself together long enough to look at the second flyer. 

            Folding it quickly, he said, "Find Miss Stein."

**

            The man in the white suit sat with his legs crossed in a manner that Mr. Jocko, head of the Guild of Brewers, was not altogether comfortable with. It was a slightly effeminate look the man had as he sat in Jocko's office. The shiny white suit, the puffy tie, the blond hair slicked down until it shone in the light from the candelabra overhead. An altogether strange look for the owner of a brewery.

            But then, Daniel Fillwater had inherited Winkles Brewery and managed it the way most heirs did, by hiring people who knew the business. All he needed to know was the bottom line. He had a wife and three children, whom he was willing to support in the fashion to which they were accustomed as long as they stayed in Psuedopolis. 

            He removed a paper from his breast pocket and unfolded it.

            "Mr. Jocko, are you still aware that the Winkles Corporation is the single largest payer of dues to the guild?"

            "Yes, Mr. Fillwater," said Jocko. 

Winkles was the largest brewery in the city, and with guild dues calculated according to number of employees, its payments formed a good fifteen percent of guild revenue. The Winkles Corporation, however, was a new entity made up of the old Winkles brewery and several smaller breweries Fillwater had purchased in the past year. Jocko suspected him of wanting to forge some kind of monopoly in the brew business.

            Fillwater smiled over the paper in his hand. "So you are also aware that dips in Winkles profits, and the subsequent removal of employees, would be an unfortunate situation felt not only by me and my workers but by the guild as well?"

            "Of course, Mr. Fillwater." Jocko was staring at the back of the paper. His sweaty palms were planted squarely on his knees.

            "Well, then," said Fillwater, settling a monocle in his left eye and perusing the paper, "you will understand why I was slightly alarmed at last month's profit figures. Pardon. Profit _figure _would be the better term. Do you know what that figure is, Mr. Jocko?"

            "No, Mr. Fillwater."

            "Then I will certainly tell you. It is exactly the same amount as what the Winkles Corporation will pay in guild dues from now on if things with the Ansbachers don't get sorted out." Fillwater's left eye looked massive in its monocle. "You will surely recognize this figure. It is short and has an unpleasantly round shape."

            The three remaining wisps of hair on Jocko's head waved as he nodded. 

            "We'll be talking about the problem at the guild meeting tonight, Mr. Fillwater," he said. "Will you be there?"

            "A Winkles representative will attend." Fillwater put away the monocle, and Jocko relaxed a little. "I trust the guild to do its duty," said Fillwater. "And I suggest that whatever course of action is decided upon tonight, it involve in some way the censoring of Miss Stein."

            As Jocko saw Fillwater to the door, he was thinking: _I wish he hadn't said that_.

**

            Several hours later, the Patrician was writing at his desk in his bedroom. His journal lay open at his elbow but he hadn't consulted it the whole evening. He'd intended to write a section of his political treatise (working title "The Servant") on the art of negotiation, especially in relation to trade agreements. When he put quill to paper, however, something else arose. It was a chapter titled: "Concerning the fairer sex, specifically, the incidental influence of ladies on political affairs and the counteraction thereof." He'd already laid out the positives of having a certain type of woman as helpmeet for the politician. She should have a mild personality, a modest public deportment, complete devotion to the Servant and no demands outside of the domestic sphere. It was a short section.

            He'd been struggling with the next part, which began: "Seeing as the aforementioned lady does not exist or, if she does, would be as interesting as tapioca pudding, it behoves the Servant to consider what is the best of two evils: a willful lady or no lady at all." This is as far as he'd got. He'd rarely thought about the topic in an organized fashion.

            Of course, he knew that any difficulties Hanna brought him were ultimately his fault. He had suggested their arrangement. Had compelled it, even. He'd calculated the risks in advance and for a time was pleased to see that Hanna was less of a liability than he thought. She was discreet, elegant, charming in public. In private too, when she wanted to be. But she was also, alas, a woman of the sort he had characterized in his treatise as "willful." This was, he realized as he ran his mind over the thought, an understatement.

            There was a knock at the door.

            "You sent for me?" sighed Hanna as she sat on the edge of the Patrician's bed. 

Though Lord Vetinari had not seen her in weeks – she'd made herself scarce after he killed the Watch billboards – he thought it best to signal his displeasure at recent developments by not looking at her. Instead, he returned to his writing. Or at least, he made little squiggling lines on the paper with his quill. 

            "By midday tomorrow I would like a memo outlining any and all _add-word-icing_ actions to be taken in future regarding the Ansbach breweries," he said as he squiggled. "No further actions will be taken by you or the brewers until I've approved them."

            Hanna said nothing.

            "The Watch billboards were clever, I grant you, but the flyers are unacceptable. I've had them collected. If anything like that happens again, I will be displeased."

            The only sound as he paused was Hanna's breathing. He turned the page of his journal and pretended to study it, his finger marking his place.

            "I've been informed that you sold your house," he said. "It appears that this campaign of yours has exceeded your financial capabilities. Do you really think it prudent to…"

            It occurred to Lord Vetinari that it wasn't like Hanna to let him lecture her without getting a word in. He looked up. She lay on her side, eyes closed, her hair spread like a wheat-coloured sail over his pillow. After an intake of breath, she let out a soft snore. 

Sighing, the Patrician pulled off her shoes and tucked the blanket around her. He returned to his desk, readied a fresh sheet of paper and picked up his quill.

            "Is it better to be feared or loved?" he wrote. "Answer: One or the other is desirable. Problems arise when neither apply." He stared at what he'd written. Then he slipped out of the room.

**        

            The Brewers Guild meeting had dragged on for so long that Jocko had been forced to call out for pizza to avoid a defection of hungry members. The conference room was full of representatives from all of the breweries in the city except the Ansbachers. The mood was disgruntled. Four vats of hard lemonade had already been drunk; the guild never showed favoritism by serving the product of any of its members. 

            For several minutes, Jocko had been trying to regain control of the meeting. He rammed his gavel into the table and bellowed: "ORDER!"

            The members finally settled. 

"We have to agree on Plan A. That was…" Jocko snatched a paper out of the hand of the guild secretary, Mr. Beezle. "Point one: A trial run of a new brew suggested by Mr. Saltlik--"

            "What good'll it do to brew new beer?" said a member at the back. "We can't get them foreigners on quality." Most Morporkians referred to Ansbachers as foreigners. Ansbachers returned the compliment.

            "I object to that comment!" said another member. "We can brew better beer than any foreigner. Mr. Beezle, strike the last comment from the record."

            "Mr. Beezle is here to record the truth," said the first member. 

            "Truth, not heresy!" They scuffled, and the rest of the membership erupted into loud hurrahs and calls to place bets.

            Mr. Beezle put a hand over his eyes. 

            "ORDER!" shouted Jocko. His gavel came down on the table several times until the loud cracks annoyed the members enough to settle them again.

"This is no way for men in the beer business to behave," he scolded. He glared around the hall, then cleared his throat. "The guild'll be on hand to observe the first stages of Mr. Saltlik's new brew. No more discussion on point one. Point two: We'll appeal to the Patrician to…er…" 

Everyone in the hall looked around warily. They were perfectly aware that Lord Vetinari had agents everywhere. Not all of them were human. When a rat was caught in the hall the week before, it was thoroughly interrogated by Mr. Jocko before being stunned and deposited on the doorstep of Giblet's Restaurant, where rodent was a specialty.

"We'll…er…" Jocko looked to Mr. Beezle for help. "What'd we say we'll do?"

Mr. Beezle turned a few pages back in the book that held the minutes. "Member Grabbin suggested," his voice took on a twang, "…'We should tell Vetinari to get that hussy o' his back in line. I reckon she got a hankerin' to be bent over his knee and thar's not a man here wouldn't do it if he won't.'" Mr. Beezle's voice returned to normal. "At which there were diverse here-here's." 

            The hall remained silent. None of them, especially Mr. Grabbin, remembered it put just like that. Maybe it was the hard lemonade.

            Jocko cleared his throat. "I think the executive committee should make an appointment for tomorrow," he said. "For a diplomatic, tactful _discussion_ with his Lordship. Mr. Grabbin, maybe Mr. Beezle should replace you, just for tomorrow."

            The membership nodded. Diplomatic, tactful. Maybe the executives would get out alive.

            "On to Plan B," said Jocko. "We were discussing…"

**

The Patrician sat on the edge of his bed. He was clothed in a fresh black robe identical to the one he'd worn the day before. His closet contained ten such robes, all the same except for their varying shades of black. The Patrician insisted that at all times they should hang in the order of light black to dark black, with robes of intervening tones hanging according to their proper place in the spectrum. Anyone who thought this frightening would be terrified to look in his Lordship's sock drawer.

            He touched Hanna's shoulder again.

            "Hanna."

            "Mmph."

            "_Hanna_."

             Her eyes blinked open against their will. It was nominally morning. There was a sliver of pale light in the crack of the curtains. Lord Vetinari had worked all night and had returned to his room only to change and wake Hanna.

            "I want a list of all of your _add-word-icing_ plans by midday," he said instead of the customary good morning. 

            She groaned and pulled the blanket over her head. The Patrician moved it back down.

            "Listen carefully," he said.

            Hanna's hands covered her ears, her eyes squeezed shut.

            "Are you listening?" 

            "Mmph."

            Lord Vetinari took that for a yes. "I would like you to stop," he said. "Not the support of your family; I doubt I could convince you to do it. I mean the selling of your jewelry, artwork, furniture and so forth. I was especially alarmed to learn that you sold your house." He moved her hand aside and leaned over to speak quietly in her ear. "I would be displeased if I heard even a _whisper _that you were borrowing money from Chrysoprase the troll to fund this _add-word-icing_ madness."

            Hanna pulled herself up. His last words had the wake up effect of a pitcher of coffee. "I needed the money," she said. "You wouldn't help."

            "I would not subsidize the breweries," said the Patrician. "That is an economic issue. You are not." He handed her an oversized piece of parchment paper. 

Hanna glanced at it. Then she looked at it a little more closely. Then she rubbed her eyes, yawned, and looked at it again. It was still what it said it was. The deed to her house. 

"But the buyer was--"

            "--very accommodating when my agent explained last night that the sale was a mistake," said the Patrician. "We offered five percent above the closing price and after some negotiation he was happy to accept."

             "I thought he'd already moved in."

            "It was fortunate his servants hadn't time to unpack."

            The house was in a middle class Morporkian neighbourhood and was Hanna's pride, physical proof of what she'd achieved as a seamstress. The decision to sell had been a hard one. 

            "I…" She shook her head and tried to give back the deed. "I can't repay you. Half the money's already gone. The debt, the--" 

            Lord Vetinari looked mildly surprised. 

            "It is not customary for the recipient to pay for a gift received." 

"You can't just _give_ me a house…"     

And then she used her head. The buyer had paid her ten thousand dollars in cash, money she was spending to pay her debt and fund the Ansbach campaign. With the deed in her hand, she now had both her house and the money from the sale. She was ten thousand dollars – well, five thousand now--  in the black. Lord Vetinari could comfortably argue he was not supporting the breweries. Technically, he hadn't given them a penny. And what was it to him how Hanna spent her money?

"Oh," she said.

"Quite," said the Patrician.

Their eyes met, and it was a moment of such intense silence that the footsteps of the maids in the hallway could be heard as they began their morning rounds. The quiet in the room was finally broken by the soft sound of the Patrician's lips on Hanna's cheek.

"All I ask for in return is the memo," he said. He abruptly went to busy himself at his desk. "At noon. I want no more of that Feel like a Patrician nonsense. There are flyers enough circulating of far more import." 

One of them was on his desk and had some similarities to Hanna's flyer. Its design was precisely the same and it borrowed some of the words from the beer ad: Ansbach, king, Patrician. The combination of the words was different enough that they formed an entirely new message that had no reference to beer.

            "I suppose," said Hanna quietly, "that I really should thank--"

            "Drumknott sent you a note the other day. Did you get it?" said the Patrician as he folded the flyer and tucked it into a pocket of his robe. "About the theater tomorrow night. A new comedy of some kind. The Guild of Actors has been begging me to attend a performance. Tiresome, really. But perhaps you will enjoy it."

            "_As it Was_? Starring Zinneret Whitepot?"

            "I believe so."

            Hanna idly touched her cheek as she smiled. "I think I'll definitely enjoy it."


	4. IV

With one exception, each of the six men standing before the Patrician in the Oblong Office looked like they'd been shaped out of flour barrels and draped with white muslin. On their aprons was a small symbol, a vat with a spigot, sign of the Guild of Brewers. The exception wore a plain brown suit and an air of intellectuality. Mr. Beezle stood behind guild president Jocko, who'd been speaking for some time now and had succeeded in puffing out his cheeks with indignation.

            "It is a disgrace, your Lordship, a disgrace!" Jocko cried. The other guild members grumbled and nodded their approval. Mr. Beezle looked at his fingernails. "Those foreigners have outright stole our customers," said Jocko. "Stole them in broad daylight."

            "Foreigners!" repeated the men.

            The Patrician leaned back in his chair. "If I remember my regional history, the Ansbachers have been in the area for two thousand years."

            "They's still foreign," said another of the brewers. "They talks funny."

            "We are a multicultural city, gentlemen. All of us sound funny to someone. I dare say…perhaps even I sound a bit strange to you."

            The men looked at one another. 

            "Oh, no sir," said Jocko.

            "No?" said the Patrician brightly.

            Jocko shook his head. After he glared at the others, they shook their heads too. Mr. Beezle observed as if he wasn't part of the proceedings.

            "We should be certain about this," said the Patrician. "I would like this issue of funny sounding foreigners out of the way so we can discuss more pressing points."

            The brewers stood silent. The Patrician smiled at each of them in turn. Finally, he folded his hands.

            "Good. And so I take it that what you gentlemen referred to a moment ago as stealing can also be called the fruits of the _add-word-icing_ methods of the Ansbachers."

            "A disgrace, your Lordship," said Jocko. "They're undercutting our prices."

            That was a serious charge in guild-controlled economies. The guild set the minimum (but in Ankh-Morpork, never the maximum) price for goods or services produced by guild members. Any member who undercharged his guild could be expelled or worse.

            "I believe I heard the Ansbachers were charging volume rates," said the Patrician. "Only very large quantity sales result in a per barrel price lower than the guild charges."

            "Not true! They been givin away beer," said one of the brewers. "Just givin it away. We can't sell cheaper than free."

            "And they have an unfair advantage," said Jocko. 

            "Whatever could that be?" asked the Patrician.

            The room went silent. 

Mr. Beezle sighed. 

            "The Stein family…" he prompted.

            The others looked shocked. The Patrician looked merely interested. Mr. Beezle stared at Jocko until the guild president realized that it was up to him to continue what Mr. Beezle had started.

            "Well, the Stein family….er….it has a brewery and…" He looked at his fellows. They were on the look out for any interesting things that might be found on the floor of the Oblong Office. Mr. Beezle was the only one still obviously paying attention. He nodded with encouragement at Jocko, who felt a bit heartened. "Our customers are changing over because Miss Stein is your…er…" 

            "Hmm?" said the Patrician.

Jocko's face went red. "…your…er…"

            Mr. Beezle whispered in Jocko's ear. Jocko looked relieved. "_Friend_, your Lordship."

            Once again, the Patrician did his stare, the kind that gave close and personal attention to each and every man in the room. 

"It is true that Miss Stein is, as you delightfully call it, my friend," he said. "If she is using this to unfairly influence guild business, I shall certainly speak with her. If that is your wish." 

            The brewers deflated with relief. The Patrician smiled at them in a friendly fashion.

            "And I trust, there will be no more talk of expelling the Ansbachers from the guild until I've had a chance to sort this out, hmm?"

            The guild members nodded while at the same time wondering how the Patrician had already learned of a closed-door discussion made eight hours before. They thought it was record time, though it wasn't. 

"We'll hold off on all that, your Lordship," said Jocko. "But not forever. Our businesses are suffering." He gave Lord Vetinari a suffering businessman look.

            "Well, then, gentlemen. Don't let me detain you." The Patrician began scanning the paper in front of him. The brewers bowed and backed out of the Oblong Office. Outside, they rubbed the sweat off their faces with the hems of their aprons. 

The paper was written in Hanna's rather sloppy script. By the time he was half way through, the Patrician was smiling.

***

            The Disc Theater had arranged places of honour for the Patrician and Hanna front and center in two chairs that looked suspiciously like props from a play that had contained a king and queen. Both of them sat uneasily in chairs that resembled thrones but there wasn't any more room in the benches.

Candles were extinguished and the play began.

            It was a comedy involving the standard mistaken identities, farcical love stories and evil plotters. It was obviously funny; during the first half an hour, the crowd rarely stopped laughing. Hanna glanced over at the Patrician. His elbow was on the arm of his throne, his hand hiding his smile. 

She leaned over and whispered, "That part where Whitepot tripped over the Duchess was brilliant."

            "Hmm?"

            "That part."

            "Pardon. I didn't notice."

            Later, she glanced at him again. 

            Lord Vetinari wasn't smiling at the play at all. A prop table in the corner of Scene 2: A Tavern in the first act contained a prominently displayed bottle of Ansbach Beer. The shelves behind the bartender were full of Ansbachs. The shape of the bottles was unmistakable. Act One, Scene 3: The Bedroom of the Duchess contained an Ansbach, for no discernible reason, on her dressing table. Act Two opened in The Servants' Quarters, where Ansbachs were set up in a row on the side board as if ready to serve. This had _not _been in Hanna's memo.

            The curtain finally fell for intermission and comedian Zinneret Whitepot stepped out onto the stage. He smiled expansively as he waved for the crowd to remain seated. 

            "Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly thank you for your applause. In a few moments we will continue our play. But first, a serious word." Whitepot repositioned the tail of his powdered wig, then stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his vest. "After a long monologue, an actor develops a powerful thirst."

            Hanna heard a very slight noise from the Patrician. She didn't turn her head.

            "What does a thespian reach for, you may ask?" continued Whitepot. "The answer, dear Audience, is simple." An extra walked onto the stage, mugged at the audience, and handed Whitepot an open bottle. "I reach for an Ansbach Beer. So cool, so pure, like the snows of Cori Celesti itself." Whitepot took a long drink from the bottle, his face a model of ecstasy. "Aaaaaaaah!" he said. "So if you're looking for a taste experience, during intermission, get yourself an Ansbach and…" He held up the bottle, label forward, and eyed the crowd, "…Taste the Goodness."

            The Patrician and Hanna remained in their seats as many in the audience stood to stretch or fetch a drink or answer the call of nature. It was some time before Hanna had the confidence to look at Lord Vetinari. He frowned, a single, slim finger over his lips. On closer inspection, the frown was having a hard time staying in place.

            "Zinneret and I are old friends," said Hanna.

            Whitepot finished speaking to one of the audience members who'd corralled him on the stage. He waved at Hanna. She waved back. He winked. She--

            "Come, then," said the Patrician, taking Hanna's arm. The people clustered at the lobby bar fell silent and parted like a well-dressed river. The Patrician rapped the counter with his knuckles. 

            "Two Ansbachs please, my good man," he said though the bartender was obviously a woman. It didn't matter; this was theater. He leaned over to Hanna and said in a stage whisper, "I've always wondered what goodness tastes like."  

The crowd watched as they clinked glasses and drank. 

"Hmm," said the Patrician. He clicked his tongue like a wine connoisseur at a tasting. "I detect a trace of _evil_ among  the goodness. Gives it a bit of a spice, really. Quite pleasant." He took another drink. "I will have some snows imported from Cori Celesti as comparison. I believe there should be truth in _add-word-icing_." He looked at Hanna over the edge of his glass. 

            Later, the Patrician's carriage rattled over the unevenly paved streets. He stayed silent for some time.

            "You're not angry, are you?" said Hanna.

            After some thought, he said, "Whyever should I be? I was simply wondering what other surprises you have in store. Things you neglected to write in the memo."

            "I thought you'd find it funny." Hanna smiled. "You did. Admit it."

            The carriage passed over one of Ankh-Morpork's more well-developed pot holes. Hanna and the Patrician were air born for a moment, and landed again on the seat. 

            "There is something else that's not in the memo," said Hanna.

            "Ah."

            "It just came up this morning." She paused. "I know you'll say no."

            "How nice. There is no need for you to ask."

            "I was talking to Mr. Tabernathy at the mint, he's an old friend, and he mentioned how interesting it would be to cast a limited edition coin for the festival."

            "A coin," said the Patrician.

            "An Ankh-Morpork dollar. But instead of you on the front, there'd be a--"

            "--bottle of something intoxicating if consumed in quantity."

            Hanna looked mildly offended. "Ansbach is quality beer. The lager is six percent alcohol per bottle," she said. "You'd have to drink a case of that Winkles garbage just to get a—"

            "Yes, yes." Lord Vetinari looked at Hanna with amusement. "And on the reverse side of the coin?"

            "Mr. Tabernathy thinks Cori Celesti would look nice."

            "Hmm. And what do the gods have to say about using their home in your _add-word-icing_?"

            "I spoke to Ridcully this afternoon. He said on behalf of Blind Io that the gods are delighted." 

            "Your donation to the temple must have been generous."

            "I have a generous nature."

            Lord Vetinari hefted his ebony walking stick and unhooked the trapdoor in the roof that communicated with the carriage driver. "Please make a circuit of the city, Mr. Parsons," he said. When the trapdoor closed, he relaxed in the seat. 

            "How many coins?" he said.

            "We were talking about only a hundred. They should be collector's items."

            "If you can cover the cost, I do not see a problem. Of course, they can't be legal tender."

            Hanna opened her mouth but the irritated tap of the Patrician's stick on the floor of the carriage silenced her. "You have more incidental power in this city than you should," he said. "That is something else we need to discuss. Your influence does not extend to the minting of money."

            "It's only a hundred dollars."

            "It is a disturbing precedent. Next time you will ask for a thousand." The Patrician frowned. "Commemorative beer glasses of some kind would be more appropriate."

            Hanna twisted in her seat to see his face better as she talked. "If people could spend the coins, it would be like mobile _add-word-icing_ that never ended."

            "Within a month the coins would be too grubby to see the design." 

            "That's a month of publicity, then."

            "No legal tender."

            "It's a small thing."

            "No."

            She put a hand on his knee.

            "Your lordship."

            He removed her hand.

            "Please, your lordship."

            He frowned.

            "_Havelock_…"

            He knew that tone. It was low and smooth as rum and the last time he'd heard it, the only time, on Hogswatchnight, things hadn't gone well for him. Or they had, depending on how you looked at it. 

            He slid back until he leaned against the carriage door and with a long finger traced an imaginary line down the middle of the seat.

            "I am in no mood for games, Hanna. Neither you nor those nimble little hands of yours will cross this line."

            She scooted over a few inches and pointed. "This line here?" She moved a bit closer and pointed at the seat again. "Or this one?"

            "I will not be convinced."  

            "It's only a little favour."

            "The more I give you, the more you want."

            She smiled slowly. "The more you give me, the more I want."

            By her tone of voice and the look on her face, it was not clear that the Patrician and Hanna were still talking about the same thing. She was, Vetinari reflected -- and not for the first time -- excellent at her job. He crossed his legs uncomfortably and meditated on the silver knob of his walking stick as it gleamed in the light from the street lanterns. 

"I am sure you realize that there is talk in the Guild of Brewers of expelling the Ansbach members," he said.

When he glanced at Hanna, he was relieved to see the impish look had drained from her face. 

"I suggest this campaign of yours end before there are permanent consequences," he said.

"I knew Jocko would complain to you." Hanna shrugged. "The festival will be the end. Hopefully they won't expel us before then."

Lord Vetinari noticed, as he always did, that Hanna used "us" when referring to Ansbachers. It irritated him. He was a patriot in that Ankh-Morpork and the integrity of its borders was of utmost importance. The people of Ansbach had been part of the city for hundreds of years but retained the feel of a closed club. To him, Hanna was a Morporkian. Yet it appeared with her obsessive work for the brewers that she thought otherwise.

The carriage entered Ansbach in its circuit of the city. The Patrician watched the brick houses pass, the factories, the home of the Guild of Tinkers. 

"Your family brewery is nearby?" 

"It's coming up. On Serendipity and Schwips." 

He opened the trapdoor again. "Stop at the corner of Serendipity and Schwips, please."

"You want to visit? My sister will have a heart attack."

"An unofficial stop. Brief. Ah, here we are."

Production was now around the clock, in two shifts. When Hanna and the Patrician stepped into Stein's Brewery, the employees manning the tuns, vats, boilers and sieves hardly noticed. They were making lager, and with a four week fermentation time ahead of them, the young, unfermented beer had to be cooked up in constant batches and stored in the cold room if it was to mature in time for the festival. 

The Patrician leaned on his stick and watched the activity with indulgent interest. The staff slowly realized who he was and stopped working.

"Carry on," he said. 

Hanna found Brewmaster Fritz leaning over a tun full of wort, the raw soupy stuff of beer in the making.

"This is the Patrician," she said. When Brewmaster Fritz bowed, his spectacles fell off his face.

"Velcome, your lordship, velcome, velcome," he said. "Velcome to Stein's. Ve are honoured to have you here." He winked at Hanna and nodded, grinning. 

"Where's Lotte?" she asked.

"Guild meeting. Vould his lordship like a tour?"

"A brief one, please." 

"Ansbachers only?" asked Hanna. After Brewmaster Fritz nodded, she said, "Vy vould the guild be meeting this time of night?" 

The Patrician was not amused at Hanna's change of accent.

Brewmaster Fritz shrugged. "Emergency meeting. Brech called it. Come, your lordship. Let me show you our vonderful new vort…"

Hanna trailed behind but was thinking of the guild meeting. Something was cooking, that was obvious. Had the Brewers expelled them after all? She'd been sure the Patrician would get wind of it and block it somehow. She glanced at him. He was bending over the bottling machine, his stick tapping the movable arm. Did he already know? 

Brewmaster Fritz led them to the cool room, and by then, Hanna was sure that the Patrician had chosen to stop in Ansbach solely because he knew something was happening with the guild. She left him with Fritz and went out to ask the workers on the floor. Only Putty had a guess.

"They want their own guild, if you ask me." 

"Secession?"

Putty nodded. 

"The Patrician vould never allow it."

"I think they think he will."

"If Ansbach formed its own guilds, it vould be the first step to independence from Ankh-Morpork." Hanna lowered her voice as the Patrician and Brewmaster Fritz entered the main floor again. "He vould never allow it. Anything that smacked of a break up of the city."

Putty scratched his nose. "I think they think you'll convince him, Miss Stein. You got a convincing way about you." He waggled his eyebrows. Hanna smacked him on the arm. 

"Stop that, Putty. Don't say anything about this to the others."

"Righto."

The Patrician gazed around the main shop floor. "A remarkable operation," he said. The large sign arched over the brewery doors, translated out of the Ansbachers' archaic Uberwaldean dialect, read: _Beer is the bread of a happy life_. He smiled.

Hanna eased up to Brewmaster Fritz and whispered, "Tell Lotte to send me a note vhen she gets back. I vant to know vhat's going on."

Brewmaster Fritz nodded. 

As the carriage continued back to the Palace, the Patrician sat thoughtfully, his hands resting on the knob of his stick. 

"It is an interesting industry, beer brewing," he said. "The air in some parts of the brewery is quite…pleasant. Almost intoxicating, I imagine, for the workers."

His stick idly tapped the carriage floor. 

Hanna watched him and tried in vain to read his mind. It never worked. She wondered why she tried. She was about to take the unusual tack of asking him outright what he knew about the guild when he turned to her and said: 

"I realize, Hanna, that outside your contractual duties, you don't particularly like me. But I have cause to ask, do you trust me?"

She stared. The Patrician was calm, studying her face, waiting.

"Why do you ask?" she said finally.

"For the same reason most people ask questions. I want to know the answer."

"You don't know it already?"

He closed his eyes and sighed. "So _willful_," he said, almost to himself.

When he opened them, she was still only sitting there, looking at him, trying, he could see, to understand what he wanted. 

"Would it help if I said that I trust you?" he said.

"Why should you?"

"You are a professional under contract to me." 

"I can't say the same about you."

The Patrician surprised Hanna by taking her hand. "For the general good, this is an issue that must be resolved," he said. "Very soon."


	5. V

++Thanks for all the reviews, guys!++

Obsidian the troll delivered Lotte's note a few hours after Hanna and the Patrician arrived back at the palace. They'd closeted themselves in Vetinari's room for his version of pillow talk, a quiet discussion over a map spread out on the bed covers. There was a good deal of talk about trust that Hanna found hard to swallow. The Patrician was a politician who normally trusted no one and, she'd always assumed, was not particularly trustworthy himself. She was troubled when she left the Patrician writing calmly at his desk, a smile on his face. 

After she read the note Obsidian brought, she slipped out of the Palace and headed back to Ansbach. There was nothing about expulsion of the brewers from the guild, only mention of  Saltlik's plan to brew something new. A medium sized brewery, Saltlik's produced one of the better non-Ansbach beers. Its best seller was called Razorback, a favorite at dwarf bars. If any Ankh-Morpork brewery could come up with a beer to rival Ansbach, it was Saltlik's.

            "Vhen are they doing it?" Hanna asked.

            "Day after tomorrow," said Lotte. "Vee have…" she smiled slyly at her sister. "Sources."       

            Hanna strode the length of the brewery's main floor, head bent, thinking. Lotte told her as much detail as she knew about what Saltlik planned but it was third-hand information. 

            "And vhat do they plan to brew this beer out of?" asked Hanna. "Veeds? Old boots? Used paper?"

            "Vorse," said Lotte. She told. 

Hanna stopped pacing.

            "You're sure?"

            "That is vhat ve vere told."

            Slowly, a smile blossomed on Hanna's face.

            "It's too beautiful."

            "Vhat is?"

            Hanna put her arm around her sister's shoulders and they walked for awhile, talking quietly.

**

            The executive committee of the Brewers Guild gathered round a small meter on Kettle No. 1 at Saltlik's brewery. No average kettle, this one was so large that it could boil sufficient quantities of water to serve tea to a rugby league. 

Saltlik himself, a wiry man with fleshy lips, polished the meter with his apron, then motioned for the men to step back. Mr. Beezle, who'd arrived at the brewery earlier than the other guild members, was in the background with notebook and pencil at the ready.

            "Gentlemen," said Saltlik. "We have planned this new brew for some time, and we welcome this moment to begin with guild support this crucial stage of the process. As you know, we have dispensed with some of our usual ingredients in favour of a local version of maize." He held out his hand, and the brewers ooh'd and aah'd a small kernel of corn in his palm. "This grain will help us brew a beer to rival anything the foreigners can produce, and at cheaper prices." 

The guild members applauded. Saltlik bowed. "As you can tell by the heat, gentlemen, we already started the fire. The rest..." Saltlik paused dramatically, "…is to come. Would you like to do the honours, Mr. Jocko?"

            The guild president positioned himself a few feet away at a wall of dials and levers. The rest of the committee leaned forward. Mr. Beezle took a discreet step backward. 

When Saltlik made the sign, Jocko turned one of the dials on the wall. A sound like the deflating of a balloon whined from the kettle. The guild members concentrated on the meter.

            "As you can see, gentlemen," said Saltlik, "the meter is showing the rising temperature in the kettle. In a few minutes, the contents will reach sufficient heat to begin malting the  maize kernels, which we will use for the rest of the brewing process. My assistant Mr. Capshan developed this mashing method."

            The committee members nodded their approval at the seemingly brow-beaten man who stood at Saltlik's shoulder.

            "He estimated that the process could take twenty four hours," said Saltlik. "However, I suggested that a small amount of oil in the kettle would speed things up. We are brewers, after all, not vintners." The guild members chuckled at this bit of professional humour, then turned back to the meter. The needle, moved by steam from a tube connected with the kettle, showed that it was hot inside indeed.

            Jocko had developed a healthy sweat but didn't bother to wipe his face. It was part of the business. "A question, Mr. Saltlik," he said. "What is the quantity of water suggested for—" 

            Behind the hiss of steam, there was a small pop.

            Saltlik looked at his assistant, who checked several of the gauges and tubes that protruded from the kettle.

            "Must be a small air hole in one of the hoses, sir," he said.

            There was another pop.

            "Find it and fix it, Mr. Capshan," said Saltlik. He smiled at the guild members. They looked uneasy. "Nothing to worry about gentlemen."

            Pop.

            "It is surely just--"

            Pop.

            "—only a--"

            Pop. Pop.

            "—minor malfunction in the--"

             Pop. Pop. Pop.

            "Mr. Capshan!" hissed Saltlik. The assistant was running around checking the equipment. He gasped.

            "What is it?" said Saltlik over the rising volley of pops.

            "I think the water meter is broken, sir."

            "So?"

            "So, we don't know how much water is in the kettle," said Capshan. "If there's not enough water--"

            The popping sounds now boomed from inside the kettle.

            "What?" shouted Saltlik over the noise.

            "If there's not enough water, or--" Capshan looked at the kettle in horror, "_no water at all_…"

            The executive committee of the Guild of Brewers might not have been the most intelligent men in the city but they knew when it was time to make an exit.

            "Evacuate!" cried Jocko.

            Saltlik held out his hands. "No! Gentlemen! It's only a--"

            There was a painful whine from the screwed down lid of the kettle. The guild members made a run for it. Mr. Beezle was already gone. Saltlik and his staff stayed to fuss with the kettle. This was unfortunate because it exploded a minute later.

**

Hanna looked up from her book. The hammock she'd had installed between two oak trees in the palace garden

swayed as she listened to the booming sound pass over and die away. The noise was followed by a series of bangs that sounded like ignited firecrackers.

A few moments later, the Patrician strolled up in the manner of someone who just happened to be passing by and thought it a nice opportunity to stop and say hello. 

"What I find interesting," he said as he leaned against a tree, "is that the number of instances of exploding breweries last year, in total, was zero. I'm quite sure because I checked." He flicked a bit of dandelion fluff from his robe. "The instances of exploding breweries since you came to the Palace has been two. It's practically an epidemic." 

Hanna bit the inside of her cheek. 

"I don't want to imply cause and effect if none exists," Lord Vetinari continued, gazing meditatively at the clouds. "However, I am sensing – and do correct me if I'm wrong – a distinctive trend."

            Hanna lost her internal struggle. At least she had the decency to put a hand over her mouth as she snickered. 

Frowning, the Patrician looked down at her for a while. Then he grasped the hammock rope and gave it a small tug. 

            The hammock swung back and forth, back and forth.

            He pushed a bit harder.

            Hanna was giggling now as she swung back and forth, back and forth. 

            A small fluffy white object sailed out of the sky and landed on her skirt. Though Hanna was swinging quite fast, the Patrician snatched it up with no trouble and examined it closely.

            As the hammock slowed, he popped the object into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully.

            "Could use more salt."

            Hanna burst out laughing.

**

            Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt in the Great Saltlik Explosion. Only Mr. Capshan claimed earnest damage; every time someone spoke to him he made shrugging motions and waved at his ears, the universal sign of sudden deafness. Sick leave saved him from being fired.

The explosion at Saltlik's brewery caused such concern among the beer drinking public that even some dwarf bars started negotiations with the Ansbachers. The whisper campaign mysteriously circulating in the city against all of Saltlik's products also helped.

Daniel Fillwater was not pleased. Jocko could tell by the friendly smile on Fillwater's face. He only smiled like that when he was about to say or do something Jocko wouldn't like. The guild president poured himself a hard lemonade from the bottles kept chilled in a box in the guild's main hall, and sat despondently in his chair, waiting for the worst.

Fillwater took out his monocle and polished it with his handkerchief.

"I had high hopes for the guild on this issue," he said. "High hopes." He breathed on the monocle glass and attacked it with the handkerchief again. "It seems that Plan A has been a failure. Saltlik is finished. And the Patrician…"

Jocko looked around and was not relieved even when it looked like it seemed they were alone in his office.

"…he is obviously a foolish old man dazzled by the mistress he's bought," said Fillwater.

The groan from Jocko was barely audible.

Fillwater put his monocle away. "When last we met, I advised you to do something about Miss Stein. You did not choose to take my advice. It seems a change of method is in order."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"What they did to Saltlik was sabotage."

"We don't know that," said Jocko, worried.

Fillwater glared. "Of course we do. The water in the kettle wasn't siphoned off on its own. The milled corn didn't replace itself with whole kernels. And I doubt the water meter broke itself. It was sabotage. I suggest two things, Mr. Jocko. First, there is a mole in the guild, someone who passed information about Saltlik to the Ansbachers."

"I don't believe it!" said Jocko. "Not the membership. We're brothers!"

 "And second," said Fillwater as he leaned back in his chair, "I believe it time that we go on the offensive."

"Plan B?" said Jocko, slumping in his seat.

"Not the Plan B from the guild meeting, Mr. Jocko," said Fillwater. "_My_ Plan B."

**

            A few days later, the Guild of Brewers expelled all Ansbach members by unanimous vote. Daniel Fillwater was present for this historic meeting but Mr. Beezle was not in attendance. None of the Ansbachers had been invited. 

            They promptly met on their own and voted to form the Guild of Ansbach Brewers. This was around tea time.

            By dinnertime, rumour had spread through the city that Ansbach had formally seceded from Ankh-Morpork. 

++ To be continued...!


	6. VI

Needless to say, people were upset.

            The crowd in front of the palace was so thick that Commander Vimes had to fight to get through. The usual suspects, nobles and guild leaders, were already shaking their fists angrily at the Patrician in the Rats Chamber.

"Call out the regiments!" cried Lord Rust. 

"Seal the border!" shouted Lord Selachii.

"Arm the people!" roared Boggis, head of the Thieves Guild.

The Patrician held up his hands for silence but the Council ignored him. There was a general air of stunned anger and confusion. With one exception, the members of the Council conducted themselves like headless chickens with the miraculous ability to still cackle. The exception was Mrs. Palm, head of the Seamstress Guild. She sat grim faced at the conference table, her arms folded across her chest. 

As Vimes elbowed his way through irate council members, Lord Rust spun around and pointed like his was the finger of fate. "And what are YOU doing about this, Vimes? The city going to Hades and you strolling in late. Ha!"

"I haven't had a very nice day," growled Vimes, "and I won't listen to some laced-up piss pot tell _me_ what--"

Lord Vetinari picked up his ebony cane and with a whoosh, whacked it on the tabletop. There was a sudden, startled silence.

"Thank you for your attention," he said. He turned to Vimes. "Report."

Vimes had spent some time putting elbows and boots to good use in the vicinity of the Ankh-Morpork-Ansbach border. A more physical technique was necessary for cutting through the crowds gathered in the Platz once he noticed that his preferred method of shouting "Get the bloody hell out of my way!" didn't yield the usual results. 

"Doesn't look good, sir," he said to the Patrician. "There's no way to know how many Ansbachers are fleeing out of Morpork towards the Platz, but the way the streets are blocked, I'd say a few thousand."

"Let the traitors go," said Lord Venturii. "Sessies!"

Lord Vetinari stared around the table to ensure that Venturii's outburst wouldn't be followed by others. 

"Continue, Vimes."

"There's been rumours of raids on Ansbacher-owned shops in Morpork, sir, and of riots up in the Shades. Anybody with an accent getting thumped, that kind of thing. We had a tip that Ansbachers had broken into the armoury but there was nothing amiss when we got there. There was also a report of some Ansbachers dressed in," Vimes thought about what  Corporal Nobby Nobbs had told him, "I reckon it was traditional clothing, what with the short vests and fuzzy balls hanging from their hats. They apparently dumped a shipload of Winkles Old Peculiar into the river, but we haven't got any confirmation." He thumped a fist on the table. "That's the problem. I haven't got confirmation on anything. Watchmen all over the place and nobody's actually _seen_ anything except Ansbachers loading up carts and heading hubwards." 

"If your watchmen stubbed out their dog ends and peeked out of their comfortable alleys, they'd see the secessionists at their dirty work," said the head of the Butchers Guild. "Their carts are probably loaded with loot from Morpork shops. Mark my words."

"_My_ watchmen have--"

 "I'll give you confirmation, Vimes," said Mr. Smuech of the Tailors Guild. "The Ansbach members, former members, I should say, of my guild informed us tonight that they are forming their own guild just like the brewers did. Guild of Ansbach Tailors, they're calling themselves." His cheeks billowed. "What's next? Dwarf guilds? Troll guilds? This city will unravel like a badly hemmed skirt if we don't teach those Ansbach foreigners a lesson!" There was applause from around the table. 

"Thank you for your viewpoint, Mr. Smuech," said the Patrician. "Vimes, what is happening on the Platz?"

"Some fighting, sir. Nothing much. People throwing things about. Some rocks, a few bottles and…" Vimes' grim face twitched, "…several cats."

"Anyone seriously injured?" asked Boggis.

"Besides the cats?"

"Proves their barbarity," Lord Selachii whispered to Lord Venturii. "Throwing poor defenceless cats in a fight."

"Actually," said Vimes, "_they_ didn't thr--"

The Patrician rapped the table with his knuckles. "Vimes, are there barricades going up?"

"They're hammering away Ansbach side. But mostly people are milling around waiting to see what happens next."

"Hmm." The Patrician folded his hands on the table. "It would be helpful if you set a line of watchmen across the Platz. Elbow to elbow, commander. I don't want the situation to escalate. No throwing of puppies, parakeets, small lizards and so forth." He looked out across the conference table. "I suggest we send an embassy to the Ansbacher Council of Elders. This misunderstanding between—"

There was a snort from Lord Rust. Lord Vetinari turned his attention to him.

"You have an opinion, my lord?"

"I do." Rust rose from his chair like a self-righteous soufflé. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Council, it is clear that due to," he coughed, "_personal_ considerations, Lord Vetinari will not do what needs to be done in the case of the Ansbach rebels. Things might not have got out of hand to begin with if it wasn't for that…" His voice trailed off when he realised he was speaking into a shocked vacuum that seemed to suck up every word he was saying. 

He looked at the Patrician. Lord Vetinari was frowning, but not in an angry way. He looked like a schoolteacher aware that one of his dimmer students was about to give the wrong answer.

"We are all waiting with interest for the end of your thought, Lord Rust," he said.

Rust cleared his throat. "Well, it's that blasted seamstress," he said, looking around the table. Several council members, former clients of Hanna's, turned their gazes away. 

"She's one of them," continued Rust. "Everyone knows she's behind the feud between the breweries, and there is some talk that she was instrumental in that explosion at Saltlik's a few days ago. An act of terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, that looks like a deliberate and calculated attempt to spark the very crisis we have now." 

He turned to the Patrician. "It is my sad duty to point out to the Council, my lord, that this Ansbacher has deceived you. She has blinded you to the true intention of her traitorous plans. Furthermore, your…infatuat--" At the look on the Patrician's face, Rust back-tracked. "…_indulgence_ in matters related to her will keep you from acting firmly and decisively against the rebels." 

Lord Rust straightened as he addressed the Council. "I propose that Lord Vetinari be relieved of involvement in this issue and that Hanna Stein be arrested on sight. For treason." 

Mrs. Palm slapped her hands loudly on the table as she stood up. For a long moment, she stared at the Patrician. Then she stalked out of the Rats Chamber, the slamming of the door as loud as the closing of a tomb in the silence. Council members seated around Rust very quietly lifted their chairs and moved them in slow increments away from him. 

The look of mild annoyance on the Patrician's face hadn't changed all through Rust's speech, and that, to the Council, was far more disturbing than if he'd flown off the handle. Hanna Stein was his… None of them, especially those who'd had business with Hanna in the past, liked the idea of it, but she was the Patrician's…private seamstress. It was strange that he hadn't defended her. Or himself. It was practically an admission of her guilt.

The Patrician rose to his feet. Everyone in the room except Vimes and Rust shifted to the edge of their chairs in case a quick flight was needed.

"Are there others in the Council with Lord Rust's opinion?" he asked. The silence sharpened. "Is there anyone who wishes to voice an opposing opinion?" Lord Vetinari let his eyes wander over every face around the table. 

            "I see," he said. "This appears to be something of a vote of no confidence. If it is the will of the Council, I will obey it. _Pro tempore_." He picked up his walking stick. "I leave the matter of Ansbach in your capable hands." With a curt nod to the Council, he left the Rats Chamber. After sharing a moment of shock with the civic leaders, Vimes followed.

            The Patrician strode rapidly down the corridor and Vimes stopped him only by sprinting in front of him, his arms spread out.

            "You appear to be in my way, Sir Samuel."

            "You aren't going to let those arseh--" at the frown on the Patrician's face, Vimes said, "honourable civic leaders run the show, are you? There'll be civil war!"

            "They may find a peaceful solution to the Ansbach problem, Sir Samuel."

            Vimes snorted.

            "I am not a dictator," said Lord Vetinari, contrary to the political reality of the city. "I rule by the will of the Council. If it feels I am unfit in this one instance, it is my duty to step aside."

            "They might ask you to step aside permanently."

            "It is their prerogative to ask." Lord Vetinari started walking again but Vimes kept in step with him.

            "If you think Miss Stein'll need protective custody, sir, we could--"

            "Very thoughtful of you, Vimes, but I'm sure she will be fine." The Patrician halted suddenly and stared at him. "You did know her before, didn't you?" 

To his alarm, Vimes felt a wave of heat start at the collar of his armour and work its way up his face.  

            "Then you should know," said the Patrician, "that she is an independent-minded woman capable of fending for herself." He side-stepped Vimes and continued down the corridor.

**

            Rosemary Palm caught up with him in the hallway that lead to his bedroom. She'd been pacing angrily outside the Oblong Office, lost patience and went downstairs where she ran into Vimes. She was out of breath by the time she reached the Patrician.

            "Hanna is many things but she's no traitor," she said. She pointed down the hall. "You're the only friend she had in that chamber. Why didn't you defend her?"

            "I believe she had another friend there."

            "It was _your_ responsibility."

"Was it? I would counter any talk against Hanna's ability to fulfil the service for which I hired her, but anything else is not my concern."

            "Nonsense, Havelock, and you know it."

            Lord Vetinari gave her a stern stare, which Mrs. Palm matched without flinching. They had a long history; the seamstresses had been some of the Patrician's first allies.

            "It has been said in other quarters, Rosemary, that I am a foolish old man dazzled by the mistress I've bought," he said. "That is only half true."

            He closed his bedroom door firmly behind him.

**        

            _Declaration of Independent and Sovereign Nationhood Separate in Name and Municipal Reality from the Oppressive State of Ankh-Morpork_

            "It doesn't exactly slide off the tongue," said Hanna over the edge of the paper.

            Mr. Beezle nodded. "The title needs some work but the rest is quite polished." 

            They were in an upper room of the old Ansbach town hall. From outside came shouts, snatches of song and hammers striking wood as for the second day, Ansbachers built  barricades across the Platz. 

Directly below them they could hear more shouting. The Council of Elders had been in session downstairs for 48 hours and had succeeded in doing the following: 1) Advising Ansbachers with any extra room in their homes to offer it to the refugees fleeing Ankh-Morpork; 2) Ordering the ration of all foodstuffs; 3) Upsetting the guilds. The Ansbacher version of everything from brewers to assassins wanted at least the same kind of say in the Council of Elders as they'd had in the Ankh-Morpork Council. The Elders weren't inclined to give it to them. They never had to before.

The shouts had escalated that morning when an envoy had delivered a message from Ankh-Morpork: If the rebellion wasn't ended in 72 hours, Ansbach would be taken back by force. After a long session of enraged pounding on the tables and cries for the vengeance and honour of the ancestors, etc., the Elders had the presence of mind to notice that the order was signed Lord Rust, not Vetinari. They congratulated Hanna on her influence with the Patrician. With him out of the way, they thought, independence was halfway won. Her attempts to argue otherwise were waved down good-naturedly. She'd retired to the attic with Mr. Beezle.

Apart from his duties as secretary in the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Brewers, Mr. Beezle was secretary of the Committee for the Liberation of Ansbach, Morpork section (CLAMs), Ansbach's largest secessionist group. He'd held both positions for several years without either knowing about his post in the other. His instructions had been very clear on this point.

Mr. Beezle had been entrusted with writing the momentous document that would announce Ansbach's new place in the world. He was so efficient at his job that he'd started it a year before CLAMs had asked him to do it. It was a task he was well suited to. Contrary to his bow tie image, he was an agent who very much liked being provocative. It was, one could say, his job.

Hanna turned to the first page of the declaration.

_When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political suspenders which have connected them with the trousers of tyranny, and to assume among the Powers of the Disc, the separate and equal station to which they are entitled, a certain amount of respect to the opinions of halfway educated people requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation._

_We hold these truths to be pretty reasonable if you think about it: that all people regardless of their ability to pronounce the letter "w" are created equal; that they are endowed by the Gods with certain rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of beer brewed to the Ansbach Purity Law of the Year of the Distressed Wombat…_

Hanna looked up from the paper. "The trousers of tyranny," she said, smiling.

"At first I wrote the pants of persecution but thought the other sounded better," said Mr. Beezle.

"It's very inspiring."

"Thank you."

They sat for a moment and listened to the singing from outside. It was an old Ansbacher song about the freedom in the oak, fir and birch forests of the Old Country. A typical exile song. The rhythm of the words coincided with the blows of several dozen hammers on the wooden sections of the barricades.

"To be honest, I never had a particular opinion about trees," said Hanna.

"Me either," said Mr. Beezle. "Sometimes my mother sang that same song when she cleaned house. I could never get that worked up about birch."

"You're only half Ansbacher. I have no excuse."

 "I suspect you're more Morporkian than I am." Mr. Beezle tucked the declaration into a satchel.

"Then why is there an arrest warrant out on me and not you?" 

"I've been longer at my job," said Mr. Beezle. "And if I may be so bold," he gave her the mischievous, scheming smile common to tax accountants and spies, "I'm the best at it."

He offered Hanna his arm. "I must return to the madness downstairs. I'm to read in the ringing tones of liberty as Item F: Declaration of Sovereignty, on the day's agenda. Will you stay to hear it?"

"Sorry, Manfred," said Hanna. "I have a lot more work to do."

+++ Heh-heh...I know DW is very English and I've just showed myself to be very American! Oh well...Who **wouldn't** have fun ripping of the Declaration of Independence!? More to come...++


	7. VII

Winkles Brewery was at full production now that Ansbach beer was being, well, if not  poured down the privies of Ankh-Mopork, at least stored in cellars to be enjoyed in private. It looked like it would never be sold in Morpork again.

 As Daniel Fillwater counted the bottles and barrels in the twilight coolness of the warehouse, his mind floated on a cloud of long profit figures that stretched indefinitely into the future. He paused to read the label on a palette of bottles of Winkles Morporkian Red. For Delivery To: The Bucket. He smiled. _What_ was the Official Beer of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch now? 

            It had amazed him really how easy it had been. Just a nudge, and the Ansbachers had done exactly what he wanted. Forming their own Guild of Brewers wouldn't have inspired outright revolution if it wasn't for his tiny, well-placed rumours. Ankh-Morpork had been waiting for the foreigners in Ansbach to rebel. They would, Fillwater knew, accept the slightest hints that it had happened. As soon as the Morporkians believed it, the Ansbachers with their traditional hedgehog method of self preservation felt the need to make the rumours true. Human nature took its course. 

            And beer was brewed. 

            Fillwater took a clipboard down from the wall and ran his eyes across the rows of numbers. The orders coming in were beyond anything Winkles had ever seen. It was fascinating reading, numbers growing larger and longer down the page. He was lost in them.

            The iron tip of an ebony stick came into his line of sight and with slow downward pressure pushed the clipboard out of his hands. It clattered to the floor.

            "Good evening, Mr. Fillwater," said the Patrician.

            Fillwater could not say that he was surprised. He'd never considered Jocko reliable. The man could fear the Patrician and his spies but turn informer himself.

            "Welcome to my humble place of business, your lordship," said Fillwater. "To what do I owe the honour?"

            Lord Vetinari rolled the stick between his palms. "I wanted to personally congratulate you and Winkles as a whole on your new-found prosperity," he said.

            "Very kind of you," said Fillwater. His eyes followed the motion of the Patrician's stick.

            "And I wanted to thank you."

            Fillwater's gaze snapped up. He saw only a mildly pleased look in Lord Vetinari's blue eyes. 

            "Surely you have nothing to thank me for, your lordship."

            "On the contrary." The Patrician strolled over to a stack of palettes and bent to read the labels. "Have you ever heard of the concept of a controlled revolution?" he said over his shoulder.

            "No, your lordship."

            "Ah. Well. You are a businessman, not a politician. You have other interests." The Patrician passed on to a row of barrels and tapped them with his stick. "A controlled revolution is a rebellion that occurs at a predictable time and place under circumstances that are foreseen. It is much like an experiment conducted within the bounds of the scientific method. Theoretically, a controlled revolution is simpler to observe and…influence."

            Fillwater had followed the Patrician's progress down the palettes. He stopped when Lord Vetinari turned.

            "It was kind of you to plant the first rumours of an Ansbacher rebellion," said the Patrician pleasantly. "I had been working on the issue myself for quite some time and only had to add a few of my own little touches to get things going in the proper direction. The Ansbachers were, as you so accurately observed, bound to revolt at some point. They have, in general, a restless political nature. Far more convenient that they rebel when I wish, under circumstances of my choosing."

            Fillwater was no fool. "Pardon my ignorance, your lordship, but I have no idea what you're talking about."

            The Patrician smiled. "There is no need for me to go into details. I will simply thank you once again for your help. I will no longer be needing it." His smile broadened, revealing a fine row of white teeth with slightly sharpened incisors. "Your family is in Pseudopolis, is it not?"

            The question threw Fillwater off. He merely nodded.

            "You must miss them," said the Patrician as he removed a folded paper from his pocket. "I've always felt it a tragedy when families are separated. But perhaps I can be of  service…"

**

            Hanna stood before the Ansbach Council of Elders like a lonely rowboat before a tidal wave. Lord Rust's ultimatum was due to expire in several hours. If it was anyone but Hanna requesting to speak to the council, the Elders would have refused. They desperately needed a beer or two to withstand what they saw amassed on the Morporkian side of the Platz. The Guild of Armourers, though its (former) membership was half Ansbacher, had supplied Lord Rust's volunteers well. The view across the Platz was alarmingly spiky.

            The revolution wasn't going well. As of day five, examination of the housing situation revealed that there would not be enough room in Ansbach for the refugees unless every building in the city received a two-story addition. This would be possible if the Ansbachers had enough brick. The factories, unfortunately, were in Ankh-Morpork. Even a housing shortage couldn't convince the Ansbachers to build out of wood.

            The food situation wasn't much better. Vegetable cellars were raided, shops emptied, tables bared. Farmers from the countryside were too frightened to set up, as was their custom four days a week, on the Platz. The presence of two short-tempered mobs on either side of a barricade didn't help. 

            Many businesses had come to a complete stop. Shops which purchased their stock in Ankh-Morpork quickly ran out of basic goods. Factories with suppliers on the far side of the barricade slowed production. Even currency was starting to get scarce as people hoarded the Morporkian dollar.

            The Council of Elders had been listening to these complaints for days. The old men at the long table before the windows were tired, cranky and not sure they would live to see the morning. It was the general feeling of the population as a whole. Hanna knew it because she'd spent the revolution criss-crossing Ansbach, observing, taking notes, talking. By her reckoning, the pulse of the revolution had slowed to a level that might just be manageable.

            The main members of the Ansbacher Guild of Brewers arrayed themselves in a line behind Hanna, looking like an honour guard in the council chamber. Lotte was there, along with Brech, the president of the new guild. At the back, the galleries were packed with spectators who had nothing else to do. There wasn't enough work; overnight, the unemployment rate in Ansbach had jumped to twenty five percent.

            "As you know, gentlemen," said Hanna, addressing the Council, "I have vorked vith heart and soul for the good of Ansbach."

            There were here-here's from the audience. 

            "It is vith heavy heart that I have vatched the changing fortune of our city since Grune 2. Ansbachers driven from their homes on the other side of the barricade, Ansbachers vithout fresh vegetables, fruit and meat, Ansbachers vithout vork."

            The galleries grumbled their agreement.

            "And it has come to my attention after a discussion vith Mr. Brech of the Guild of Ansbach Brewers," she indicated Brech standing behind her, "that the breweries are approaching," she paused for effect, "their darkest hour."

            The people in the audience gasped and whispered. The Elders shushed them.

            "It is common knowledge that the barley and other grains needed for beer vere imported from the Old Country on roads that by necessity passed through Ankh-Morpork," said Hanna. "If the brewers vish to continue business, they must have access to those roads. Relations vith the Morporkians must be normalized."

            There was fierce whispering from the galleries.

            "Before I began vork on their behalf to expand the market for Ansbach beers, breweries vere threatened vith closure because there are not enough Ansbachers to drink vhat is produced." Hanna's voice was raised over the now constant buzz from the audience. "As Morporkians opened up to Ansbach beer, the brewers experienced a renaissance."

            The brewers all nodded.

            "It vas short-lived. Vithout the Morporkian market, ve estimate that half of Ansbach's ancient, proud breweries vill be closed vithin the year."

            The gallery erupted, and the Elders, who had each wanted his own gavel and refused to acknowledge any of the others as chair, smashed the table for quiet. This wasn't easy; telling Ansbachers about shuttering a brewery was like breaking the news about a dead relative. A dozen shut breweries was like a massacre to public pride.

            "It is the considered opinion of the brewers," Hanna said loudly, "that the revolution vill do irreversible damage to Ansbach's most prestigious industry. Even if relations vere normalized, Morporkians vould refuse to drink vhat they considered a foreign beer brewed by rebels."

            The Elders worked a while with their gavels until the audience quieted again. They went into a huddle, whispering loudly for several minutes. Hanna wiped her face with her handkerchief and scanned the crowd for Mr. Beezle. He wasn't there. On the barricades, she hoped. The more radical CLAMs Ansbachers who manned the Platz would need more convincing about the situation than the people in the council chamber.

            One of the Elders cleared his throat. 

            "If the Council vas to consider talking vith Ankh-Morpork, Miss Stein, how vould you propose that Ansbach negotiate in the face of that?" He pointed out the windows toward the array of armed Morporkians in the Platz.

            Hanna removed a thick piece of paper from her handbag and flourished it at the galleries. "I have here, in my hand, a pledge that no violent action whatsoever will be made against Ansbach or its people. This document declares Ankh-Morpork's desire for a relationship with Ansbach based on mutual friendship and prosperity. It is signed by the Patrician and carries his personal seal as well as that of the city."

            As Hanna walked the letter up to the Elders, she realised she'd dropped her accent by mistake. No one seemed to have noticed. The chamber was silent. The audience in the galleries leaned over the railing to catch a glimpse of the document she set on the council table. 

             The Elders quickly adjourned the meeting and retired to their study to examine the pledge. No one else left the main council chamber. More people arrived to pack the galleries and overflow into the aisles and out the doorway into the anteroom, where still more people had gathered. They'd heard the news, and being much like their Morporkian cousins, Ansbachers gravitated toward rumour.

Hanna milled around with the brewers. She wiped her face and neck with her handkerchief now and again and didn't pass up the offer of a cold beer when an enterprising seller, known locally as "Halsab" Dippler, showed up with a supply tucked on an ice tray around his neck. The audience in the galleries spoke in low tones as if they were in church. 

Outside, Mr. Beezle had explained some things to the more radical Ansbachers who manned the barricades with pitchforks, knives and oaken beams in their hands. After the shock of realization, the current president of the CLAMs accused Mr. Beezle of being a Morporkian spy. Mr. Beezle decked him. For a man who looked like he had the personality of cream cheese, he had a great right hook.

Two hours later, the Elders, faces grim, filed back into the council chamber. They paused to look out of the windows that faced the Platz. The Morporkians were still there. With crossbows. 

The Elders seated themselves. The silence in the chamber thickened. Hanna felt the thump of her heart as it protested a jump in stress levels it thought had reached maximum hours ago.

One of the Elders waved a liver spotted hand at the windows, at the weapons, at the Morporkians.

            "There vill be no negotiations vith them."

            The galleries exploded into loud cheers, stomps, whistles, chants. They lasted several minutes. Hanna stared up at the defiant faces of the Ansbachers, unsure what to do next. Lotte grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the circle of the brewers, who whispered at her fiercely. She shook them off and went back out onto the council floor. 

It was the look on the face of one of the Elders that gave her a clue. He was the oldest, had a grey, scraggly beard down his chest and eyebrows that had a mind of their own. His old eyes never left her face.

She snatched up his gavel and banged it on the table until the room quieted. She pointed out the window as the Elders had done.

"Those are Lord Rust's men," she said loudly. "The Patrician did not send them." 

The gallery was silent. 

"We can negotiate with Lord Vetinari in the knowledge that he did not insult us by sending arms against us." 

Hanna turned to the Elders. All of them listened to her with the air of people who were relieved to hear what needed to be said, things they couldn't say themselves. Not in public anyway. They were, after all, an elected body.

The old man with the beard caught Hanna's eye and nodded slightly. 

"If the Council would like to draft a letter to the Patrician," she said more calmly, "I will take it to his lordship myself."

**

            It was unusual for the Patrician to have the windows in the Oblong Office thrown wide open, allowing the less than pleasant air of the city and the street noises to interrupt him at his work. It was all right that day because he wasn't working that hard. A few papers to sign, a report or two to read. He scanned the paper in front of him, his foot tapping under his desk and disturbing his pet terrier in its sleep.

            He read.

            His foot went tap, tap, tap to a beat that came from outside his windows, far below in the Plaza of Broken Moons.

            A brief knock at the door, the call to enter, and Hanna came in wearing a summer dress the colour of pomegranate.

            "How could you work on a day like today?" she demanded.

            "I am already finished." He set the report aside and fetched from a drawer another  paper. "I have something for you."

            He'd said this often to Hanna in the weeks since the rebellion of Ansbach ended. Every day he had presented her with another piece of the jewelry or artwork she had sold during her campaign for the Ansbach brewers. He'd also given her a revised version of her contract. She now had three weeks paid vacation she intended to use later in the year when Ankh-Morpork turned grey and rainy or when the Patrician became too much to bear without a break.

            She took the paper he offered her, read it, read it again, and glanced up. Lord Vetinari was looking pleased with himself.

            "Some negotiation was necessary," he said, "but he finally sold it."  

            He was Daniel Fillwater and it was Winkles Brewery. He had suddenly left Ankh-Morpork just before the end of the Ansbach rebellion and was reportedly back with his family in Pseudopolis.

            The Patrician looked over Hanna's shoulder at the deed of ownership. 

            "I thought it wise to put it in your sister's name," he said. "Tax purposes and so on. And she does seem just the woman to mould 500 employees into brewers capable of working under the strict standards of the Ansbach Purity Law of the Year of the Distressed Wombat."

"She is," said Hanna, smiling.

When Lord Vetinari met with the Ansbach brewers soon after the end of the crisis, Lotte slapped him on the back so hard that a hand-shaped bruise developed just below his left shoulder blade. At his insistence, daily treatment consisted of Hanna massaging his back with ointments she suspected were rather useless. 

It was all right, though. "Application of ointments" was not listed as a duty in her contract but Hanna was beginning to see just how diverse her responsibilities could be.

            She set the deed on his desk. "You're welcome," she said. "Now come down to the festival."

            The brewers had been encouraged to follow through with their original plan to hold a  festival in the Plaza of Broken Moons. After the unpleasantness between Ankh-Morpork and Ansbach, the Patrician had thought it useful to allow the festival to extend to three days. The Palace subsidized beer from all brewers regardless of ethnicity who wished to sell at the festival stalls. By the second day of sunshine, music and large quantities of lagers, ales, stouts and weisses, Morporkians and Ansbachers were clanking mugs like the old friends they'd forgotten they were. 

It was the last day of the festival and the Patrician had yet to put in a personal appearance. 

            "Come to the party, sir," urged Hanna. 

            "I am not much of a merrymaker."

            "I can't believe it."

            "I usually have far too much work to do."

            "Come as a favour to me. Haven't I done so much for you lately?"

            Lord Vetinari lifted a bit of her hair that had fallen out of a  pin. "You did do very well," he said as he pinned the strands back up. "The city has shown its gratitude."

            At its last session, the City Council formally apologized for the arrest warrant for treason, and Lord Rust, on the friendly advice of Lord Vetinari, sputtered a ten-minute speech of praise for Hanna's work to bring the Ansbachers to their senses. Otherwise, all shows of gratitude had come from the Patrician himself. The crisis had been some sort of watershed. For the first time since their arrangement began, he seemed to trust her enough to put down his guard a little in private. 

The other night he took a dart board out of a box he kept locked under the bed along with a series of quite passable drawings of various municipal leaders and noblemen. They put Lord Rust up on the board and threw darts at designated targets on his face, a shot between the eyes counting as bulls eye. Hanna had noticed that all of the drawings were well pierced, and a couple well shredded, as if the Patrician had thrown knives instead of darts. Regardless, it was a relief to see that he really did blow off steam some time. Normally, the man was like an iceberg. 

            "Alas," he was saying, "I still think it too sunny." He waved a pale, blue-veined hand. "I have a sensitivity."

            Hanna went out into the hallway and returned with a small package. "A friend of mine in the Glassmakers Guild made this for me. For you. Special." She smiled. "Happy Slightly Early Half-Year Anniversary."

            It occurred to Lord Vetinari as he unwrapped the package in his meticulous fashion that this was the first time Hanna had ever given him a gift. It was certainly the first time he'd ever had an anniversary, though he assumed Slightly Early Half-Year ones were relatively unusual. Like men everywhere when confronted with a special occasion related to a woman, he wondered if he was required to come up with a gift for her. He suspected the things he'd given her the past weeks wouldn't count; they weren't specifically anniversary gifts. Flowers might do. She thought orchids were for funerals so those were out. Roses bored her because her clients had always given them to her. She did love those bright red poppies but they died as soon as they were cut. Perhaps he could have some planted in the Palace garden...

            "What do you think?" Hanna asked.

            The wrapping paper fluttered to the floor. Lord Vetinari opened the small box and stared at its contents. His reflection stared back. 

He settled the darkened lenses on his face, strode over to his desk and rang the bell. Drumknott entered, but came up short  at the sight of the Patrician. It took him a second to shift his expression from surprised terror to its usual mildness.

            Lord Vetinari could tell that the clerk looked into his mirrored glasses and saw a reflection of himself. Like it or not. 

He smiled slowly. Smoked lenses and mirrors. 

_Yes_…

After waving the clerk out of the office, the Patrician adjusted the sit of the shades and fetched his walking stick. 

"We shall try the effect in public," he said. 

He tilted Hanna's chin up, kissed her for a long moment, then offered his arm. She took it after checking her lipstick for smudges in the reflection of his lenses.

            He was still wearing them at the festival long after the sun went down.

END


End file.
